The Democratic Party used to be the party of blue collar America- supporting laws and policies that benefitted that segment of the U.S. population. Their leaders may still claim to be advocates for American working families, however their duplicitous actions that betray American workers and their families, while undermining national security and public safety, provide clear and incontrovertible evidence of their lies…. MICHAEL CUTLER …FRONTPAGE mag

Monday, January 5, 2015

CRONY CAPITALISM: How Obama’s Crony Capitalism destroyed the
American Middle-Class and made his virtual dictatorship possible.

"Upon coming to office, however, Obama pursued the most
right-wing agenda in US history. It quickly emerged that whatever vague
promises he made were insincere, and that his administration was committed to
an acceleration of the policies of the Bush administration— overseeing a
historic transfer of wealth to the rich, escalating military violence abroad,
and deepening the attacks on democratic rights within the United States."

By Joseph Kishore 19 December 2014

Wealth inequality in the United States is at its highest on record, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center. The analysis confirms previous reports documenting the immense transfer of wealth to the top during Obama administration’s “economic recovery.”

As a measure of wealth inequality, Pew compares the median net worth of upper-income families with the median net worth of middle-income and lower-income families. Upper-income families are defined as those with more than twice the overall median income, adjusted for family size.'

In 2013, upper-income median net worth was 6.6 times more than median net worth for middle-income families, up from 6.2 times in 2010 and 3.4 times in 1983, when the Federal Reserve began keeping such records. It is nearly 70 times more than the median net worth for low-income families, also the highest on records going back to 1983.

The data on median household net worth documents a sharp diversion of fortunes over the past 30 years.

In 1983, the median net worth of lower-income families was $11,400 (in 2013 dollars). This had fallen to $9,300 in 2013—down nearly 20 percent. Between 2007 (just before the economic crash) and 2013, median net worth for this layer of the population fell nearly 50 percent, down from $18,000.

In contrast, the net worth of high-income families more than doubled between 1983 and today, rising from $318,100 to $639,400. Since 2007, the wealth of this layer has fallen slightly.

For middle-income families, median wealth is flat over the past 30 years, while it has fallen nearly 40 percent (from $158,400 to $96,500) since 2007.

By the definition used by the Pew report, 21 percent of families are categorized as upper-income. One third of families are categorized as low-income (those with less than two-thirds of the overall median net income), and about half of families are middle-income (between two-thirds and twice the median income).

Thus the Pew report actually underestimates the growth of wealth inequality, since the greatest concentration of wealth is actually accrued to the top one and even the top 0.1 percent of the population.

Earlier this year, a report from economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that “virtually all the increase in the top 10 percent and top 1 percent shares over the last three decades is due to the rise in the top 0.1 percent share, from 7 percent in the late 1970s to 22 percent in 2012.”

A separate report from researchers at the University of Michigan found that wealth inequality had doubled since 2003, with households in the top 5 percent now having a wealth that is 426.5 times the average wealth of households in the bottom 25 percent.

The stock market has been a principal mechanism for the transfer of wealth from the working class to the corporate and financial aristocracy. Particularly since the crisis of 2008, Obama administration and Federal Reserve policy has been focused on bolstering the nominal value of shares, which are overwhelmingly owned by the richest segments of the population.

The rise in share prices has been accompanied (and is to be paid for) by the continual driving down of wages, along with the attack on social programs and other restraints on corporate profitability.

Fueled by trillions of dollars through “quantitative easing” programs and near-zero interest rates, the Dow Jones Industrial average has more than doubled since 2009 and has surged nearly 40 percent since the beginning of 2013.

On Thursday, encouraged by the statement from Chairman Janet Yellen that the Fed would be “patient” in considering interest rate increases, the Dow surged 421 points, its largest point gain in three years.

SERVING THE 1%... AMNESTY, IT’S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED

Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under Obama than Bush.

In the two advanced countries with the greatest income inequality, Spain and the United States, job losses and wage cuts accounted for nearly all the increase in inequality.

The state of American society as 2015 begins

6 January 2015

As the New Year begins, the social crisis gripping tens of millions of working people in the United States is worsening. Hunger, poverty and long-term joblessness remain at the highest levels in decades, while vital social services continue to be slashed.

One would never know this from reading the press, watching the evening news, or listening to the statements of politicians. The official discourse is dominated by the supposed revival of the American economy, characterized by record corporate profits and stock prices. The fact that the great majority of the population finds it increasingly difficult to make ends meet finds no reflection in the media or official politics.

The incoming Republican-dominated Congress, working with the Obama administration, will focus on cutting corporate taxes and business regulations, planning new wars, and expanding the repressive apparatus of the state. No representative of the political establishment, including the supposedly outspoken liberal Elizabeth Warren and the “independent socialist” Bernie Sanders, is proposing any significant measures to address the deepening social crisis.

The constant of domestic policy—enthusiastically pursued by both big-business parties—is an unrelenting assault on the working class.

Critical social programs are being cut further. Last week, funding for a two-year temporary increase in fees paid to doctors who treat Medicaid patients expired, leading to a reduction in payments of up to 43 percent. The fee cut will lead doctors to stop accepting Medicaid patients under conditions where millions more low-income people are being added to the Medicaid rolls as part of Obamacare.
This week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that another one million people are scheduled to lose food stamp benefits next year as a result of the imposition of a three-month limit on food stamps for childless adults. Federal food stamp funds were cut by billions of dollars on two separate occasions over the past three years.

These regressive and antisocial policies are being reproduced at the state and local level. The city of Detroit, which just exited from the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history after slashing municipal workers’ pensions and health benefits, is notifying the owners of 35,000 occupied homes that they will be foreclosed upon unless they pay back taxes. The threatened foreclosures could affect nearly 100,000 people, or one in seven of the city’s residents.

The announcement comes as the city continues the systematic shutoff of water service to tens of thousands of residents.

The Detroit bankruptcy has served as a model for plundering workers’ benefits and privatizing public facilities for other cities across the US. The mass foreclosure and water shutoff programs will similarly serve as a precedent for purging potentially valuable urban real estate of working-class and poor residents.

These policies will exacerbate the social crisis facing the working class, which has been devastated not only by the 2008 crash, but also by a “recovery” characterized by falling wages and worsening working and living conditions.

Falling wages have contributed to a rise in poverty, which increased from 12.6 percent of the population in 2007 to 14.5 percent in 2013. According to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), 47 percent of Americans have incomes below 200 percent of the official poverty level, making half of the country either poor or near poor.

According to one study using the SPM as a baseline, “Nearly two-thirds of New York City residents struggled to make ends meet at some point during 2012.”

Nearly one in four US children lives in poverty, the highest level in 20 years. One in five children does not get enough to eat, and the overall rate of food insecurity has grown from 11 percent in 2007 to 16 percent in 2013.

While the official unemployment rate has declined, the share of working-age men who are employed hit its lowest level on record in November 2014. This figure has fallen from 86.7 percent in 1948 to 69 percent today. The share of employees working at temp agencies has climbed during the economic “recovery.” More than 12 million people, or ten percent of the labor force, worked for a temporary employment agency at some point in 2013.

The share of the national income going to the richest 1 percent, and, above all, the top 0.1 and 0.01 percentiles, grows by leaps and bounds. Democracy can be nothing but a hoax in a society characterized by such levels of inequality.

The American political system is not a democracy; it is a plutocracy—a government of, by and for the rich. The financial aristocracy of bankers and financial parasites runs the country by means of the CIA, the military and a thoroughly bribed retinue of politicians from the White House and Congress down to City Hall.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that “three of the country’s wealthiest political contributors each saw their net worth grow in 2014 by more than $3.7 billion, the entire cost of the midterm elections.” This means that it is within the capacity of one person to buy not just a few congressmen or senators, but an entire election. Nothing that in any way challenges the interests of the oligarchy can be broached, much less implemented, within this framework. The “partisan gridlock” that prevails in Congress is largely a form of political theater for the purpose of deceiving the public and obscuring the overriding bipartisan consensus for austerity at home and war abroad.

The growing divergence between the needs and aspirations of the great majority of the population and an increasingly sclerotic political system, expressed in the record low turnout in last year’s election, must ultimately produce revolutionary consequences. There are already signs, such as the wave of protests against police killings, of mass social struggles to come.

They can succeed only if they take the form of an independent political struggle of the working class against both parties of big business and the capitalist system they defend.

Obama’s State of Delusion

22 January 2015

The delusional character of Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday—presenting an America of rising living standards and a booming economy, capped by his declaration that the “shadow of crisis has passed”—is perhaps matched only in its presentation by the media and supporters of the Democratic Party.The general tone was set by the New York Times in its lead editorial on Wednesday, which described the speech as a “simple, dramatic message about economic fairness, about the fact that the well-off—the top earners, the big banks, Silicon Valley—have done just great, while middle and working classes remain dead in the water.”The attempt to present Obama’s remarks as a clarion call to combat social inequality runs first of all into the inconvenient fact that the individual supposedly making this call has been the head of state for the past six years. The Times writes as if the policies of the Obama administration—the multitrillion-dollar bailout for the banks, the coordinated assault on wages, relentless cuts to social programs and the social counterrevolution in health care known as Obamacare—have nothing to do with the record levels of social inequality that prevail in the United States.The Times quotes Obama’s question delivered toward the beginning of the speech: “Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes an effort?”Anyone listening to the speech with even a passing knowledge of the record of his presidency would immediately respond that, for Obama and for the entire political establishment that he heads, the answer is clearly the former.As for the proposals themselves—including tuition assistance for community colleges, tax credits for child care and college education, an increase in the minimum wage and paid maternity leave—they consist of insincere and paltry measures, tailored to the interests of big business, that no one, least of all Obama, expects will pass.The Times itself acknowledges, “Mr. Obama knows his prospects of getting Congress to agree are less than zero.” White House officials freely admitted ahead of the State of the Union that Obama had no expectations that the measures he proposed would be taken up on Capitol Hill. “We will not be limited by what will pass this Congress, because that would be a very boring two years,” White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer told the press before the speech.Previous State of the Union speeches have produced similar wish lists aimed at generating illusions that Obama sought to advance a “progressive” agenda, proposals dropped as soon as the president completed the obligatory tour of photo-ops and speeches at college campuses.In his 2014 State of the Union, Obama called for ending tax loopholes for corporations that ship jobs overseas, investing tens of billions in infrastructure projects to create jobs, making pre-kindergarten available to every four-year-old child, regardless of family income, and enacting equal pay for women. Instead, one million people were cut off food stamps, long-term unemployment remained stubbornly high, poverty increased, and wages stagnated.On the other hand, every major initiative by Obama in domestic policy—the 2009 stimulus program, the 2010 health care reform legislation, the 2010 financial regulatory overhaul, countless budget deals with the congressional Republicans, right up to the executive order on immigration issued a month ago—was dictated by the needs of corporate America, and, in many cases, drafted by corporate lobbyists.The consequences for working people—record long-term unemployment, a tidal wave of home foreclosures, the slashing of wages in basic industry, the steady decline in living standards over all—were not accidental. They were the deliberate goal of government policy, for both Democrats and Republicans, because mass suffering by the working class was required to obtain the resources needed to bail out the financial aristocracy.The main purpose of Obama’s remarks was to give the various publications and organizations that orbit the Democratic Party—the Times, the Nation magazine (whose columnist John Nichols described the spech as a “serious effort to address income inequality”), the trade unions, and the network of pseudo-left organizations that present themselves as “socialist”—fodder for promoting the Democrats in the 2016 elections.Thus, Obama’s speech was peppered with references aimed at the upper-middle class practitioners of various forms of identity politics (Time magazine, for example, enthused that Obama “made history Tuesday night” by the inclusion in his speech of one word: “transgender”).Here is how to paint the Democratic Party in progressive colors, he was telling them. Here is how the Democratic Party will seek to fool the American people as it collaborates with the Republicans in enacting ever more right-wing policies over the next two years, combined with endless war abroad and the assault on democratic rights.The delusions, self-delusions and lies of Obama and his supporters cannot, however, alter the underlying reality of American political life: the unbridgeable gulf between the entire state apparatus and the vast majority of the population. It is notable that Obama’s speech, delivered less than three months after the midterm elections, made no reference to the debacle that the Democratic Party suffered at the polls—due primarily to the collapse in voter turnout produced by six years of right-wing policies from the “candidate of change.”Perhaps the most striking delusion of all is the belief by the ruling class and its representatives that it can, through a few honeyed and lying phrases, forestall the tidal wave of social opposition that is on the horizon.Patrick Martin and Joseph Kishore

Federal agents raided Q.T Fashion and numerous other
businesses in the downtown fashion district Wednesday, cracking down on a
scheme that cartels are increasingly relying on to get their profits — from
drug sales, kidnappings and other illegal activities — back to Mexico,
authorities said.

Nine people were arrested in raids targeting 75 locations,
and $90 million was seized — $70 million in cash. In one condo, agents found
$35 million stuffed in banker boxes. At a mansion in Bel-Air, they discovered
$10 million in duffel bags.

"Los Angeles has become the epicenter of narco-dollar
money laundering with couriers regularly bringing duffel bags and suitcases
full of cash to many businesses," said Robert E. Dugdale, the assistant
U.S. attorney in charge of federal criminal prosecutions in Los Angeles.

Non-deportation rate drops — to 99.2 percent

The
Homeland Security Department has granted legal status to 99.2 percent of all
illegal immigrants who have applied under President Obama's new non-deportation
policy for young adults, according to the latest numbers released Friday.

"Corporate
profits are at their highest share of GDP since World War II, while the portion
of national economic output going to labor has fallen to the lowest postwar
level."

"As for the state of Michigan,
which once had among the highest living standards for workers in the country,
it now ranks in the bottom 10 for per capita income in the US, barely ahead of
Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, Arkansas and other traditionally poor
states."

............. THE
ENTIRE REASON FOR AMNESTY AND OPEN BORDERS IS SO THE INVADING HORDES KEEP WAGES
DEPRESSED.

The
American political system is not a democracy; it is a plutocracy—a government
of, by and for the rich. The financial aristocracy of bankers and financial
parasites runs the country by means of the CIA, the military and a thoroughly bribed
retinue of politicians from the White House and Congress down to City Hall.

"Upon coming to office, however, Obama pursued the most right-wing agenda in US history. It quickly emerged that whatever vaguepromises he made were insincere, and that his administration was committed to an acceleration of the policies of the Bush administration—overseeing a historic transfer of wealth to the rich,escalating military violence abroad, and deepening the attacks on democratic rights within the United States."

THE RISE OF BARACK OBAMA and theFALL of AMERICA

HOW A SOCIOPATH CONNED A NATION CALLING IT “HOPE &
CHANGE” AND THEN BECAME GEORGE BUSH’S THIRD & FORTH TERMS ON STEROIDS.

Washington resumes work on right-wing agenda

By Patrick Martin 5 January 2015

The Obama administration and the new Republican majority in Congress resume work this week on a right-wing agenda of militarism and attacks on the working class. President Obama returned Saturday from his 16-day vacation in Hawaii, while Congress prepared to open its new session on Tuesday.
The 114th US Congress has the largest Republican majority in the House of Representatives since 1928, 246 to 189, and a 54 to 46 Republican majority in the US Senate. Given Senate rules, which require a 60-vote majority for most actions, and Obama’s veto power, which can be overridden only by a two-thirds vote of both houses, no significant legislation can be passed without bipartisan agreement between the two big-business parties.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats, speaking on Sunday morning television interview programs, indicated an array of areas where the two parties will collaborate, despite the public pretense of unbridgeable differences. The reality is that both parties are controlled by the ruling financial aristocracy and do its bidding on every serious matter.

One of the first items of business will be the passage of a congressional resolution to authorize the use of military force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni fundamentalist group that Obama has targeted for air strikes in both countries since August.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker of Tennessee, said there would be further hearings on the war against ISIS in January and February. “What we are all hoping to happen is getting the White House to lay out a plan that has a plausible…way to the outcome that they rhetorically have outlined,” he said.

Most Senate Republicans are demanding a more sweeping anti-ISIS resolution than the one drafted by the outgoing Democratic majority on the committee, lifting any limitations on the duration or geographic scope of the intervention, as well as any restrictions on the deployment of US ground troops. Both Corker and Senator John McCain, the incoming chairman of the Armed Forces Committee, favor a more aggressive approach.

Congress has already appropriated billions in funding for the new war, as well as authorizing US training of thousands of Syrian “rebel” fighters. The actions of these forces will be aimed not only against ISIS, which has been the beneficiary of aid from the US and its allies in the US-backed civil war in Syria, but also at the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Some Senate Democrats have joined the Republicans in criticizing the administration from the right on foreign policy. The outgoing chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey, is vociferously opposed to Obama’s decision to open diplomatic relations with Cuba. Speaking on Sunday, he also criticized Obama’s description of the cyberattack on Sony Pictures as “an act of vandalism,” claiming it was a North Korean terrorist attack on a US-based company.

Menendez has already demanded that the State Department put North Korea back on its list of nations sponsoring terrorism, even though the administration has not produced any evidence of North Korean involvement in the attack on Sony Pictures, which many security experts blame on independent hackers.

The line-up on foreign policy—a virtually unanimous Republican caucus joined by a sufficient number of Democrats to pass legislation—is likely to set the pattern for actions on domestic policy as well, according to another leading Democrat, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

Klobuchar is a principal backer of one of the first new pieces of legislation supported by Senate Republicans. The measure would repeal a tax on manufacturers of medical devices that is part of the Obamacare program. She is joined by other liberals, including Al Franken of Minnesota and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, from states where these manufacturers are headquartered.
Appearing on the ABC program “This Week,” Klobuchar said there would be “floating coalitions” involving different groups of Democrats joining with the Republican caucus on different issues. Among these issues are approval of the Keystone Pipeline to move Canadian tar sands oil to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, ratification of a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the blocking of environmental regulations on coal mining and other energy-related industries, and a sizeable cut in the corporate income tax rate.

The overall spending level for most government departments, including all major social services, has been frozen through September 30 under the latest in a series of bipartisan budget deals aimed at imposing austerity on the working class. Republican congressional leaders have said they intend to return to “regular order” in the budget for Fiscal Year 2016, which begins October 1, making even deeper cuts in social spending.

In relation to the one issue left over from the lame-duck session of Congress, funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is set to expire at the end of February, Republican Senator John Thune, incoming chairman of the Commerce Committee, said there would be no effort to shut down the department in order to force a change in the Obama administration’s enforcement of immigration policies.

The DHS includes not only Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has deported more than two million undocumented workers under Obama, but also the Transportation Security Administration, the Secret Service, the Coast Guard, and a raft of other repressive agencies.
For all the racist and anti-immigrant demagogy of the Republican Tea Party elements, the party leadership is well aware that corporate America largely supports Obama’s immigration actions, which are aimed not at helping the undocumented, but at stabilizing the supply of labor for US agribusiness, construction and other sectors dependent on super-exploited low-wage labor.
In an interview with CNN, incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke effusively of the prospects of bipartisan collaboration in Washington. He said, “[W]hen the American people elect a divided government, they’re not saying they don’t want anything done. What they are saying is they want things done in the political center, things that both sides can agree on.”

Translated into plain language, “American people” means “financial bosses,” whose vast wealth manipulates the rigged two-party system. They “want things done in the political center”—in other words, in line with the consensus right-wing policies of the ruling elite. McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner will use the Tea Party zealots to push the Washington debate further to the right, but there will almost certainly be no government shutdowns or other actions that might destabilize the financial markets.

As for Obama and the Democrats, their real attitude to the incoming Republican majority was expressed most clearly in their muted response to the exposure of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise’s links to racist forces. Last week, a blogger uncovered the fact that the Louisiana Republican had spoken at a white supremacist meeting in suburban New Orleans in 2002, when he was a member of the state legislature.

Subsequent media investigations not only confirmed the appearance, but also brought to light comments by Scalise to the effect that he shared the politics of David Duke, but without the baggage of the former Ku Klux Klan leader. He was one of six state representatives in 2004 to vote against establishing Martin Luther King Day as a state holiday.

Republicans vociferously defended Scalise. Only one Democrat in Congress has called for him to step down from the leadership. The lone Democrat in the Louisiana congressional delegation, Cedric Richmond, an African American from New Orleans, declared his full support for Scalise, saying he was not going to let critics “use Steve as a scapegoat to score political points when I know him and know his family.”

There has not been a word from the Obama White House on the controversy, and no indication that it will put a crimp in his frequent pledges to work with the incoming congressional Republican leadership—in which Scalise is a major player.

OBAMA'S AMERICA: A DEAD MIDDLE CLASS THAT STILL GETS THE TAX BILLS FOR ALL HIS CRONIES LOOTING AND TO PAY FOR MEXICO'S WELFARE STATE IN OUR OPEN BORDERS

Obama spoke as though these processes had nothing to
do with himself or his own actions. But everyone knows his White House has
overseen the transfer of trillions of taxpayer dollars to the financial
industry, while spearheading the gutting of workers’ wages and savage cuts in
jobs and social services.

JUDICIAL WATCH.org

ON THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY:

With trillion dollar bailouts,
government-run healthcare, banks and car companies, ACORN corruption, attacks
on conservative media, illegal alien amnesty, unprecedented and dangerous new
rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors—this is the Obama legacy—and
we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency!

“A more recent national survey by the
Federal Reserve, based on 2013 data, suggests the problem has not only
persisted as the economy recovered but may even have worsened. More than 30
percent of Americans reported spikes and dips in their incomes. Among that
group, 42 percent cited an irregular work schedule; an additional 27 percent
blamed a span of joblessness or seasonal work.”

“In the two advanced countries with the greatest income
inequality, Spain and the United States, job losses and wage cuts accounted for nearly all the
increase in inequality.”

IS
OBAMA BUSH’S THIRD AND FOURTH TERMS ON STEROIDS?

Obama replaced George W. Bush, who left office the most
reviled president in US history. The election campaign was accompanied by an
enormous amount of media marketing, with a candidate who had no significant
political history packaged as the agent of “hope” and “change.”

"Upon coming to office, however, Obama pursued the most
right-wing agenda in US history. It quickly emerged that whatever vague
promises he made were insincere, and that his administration was committed to
an acceleration of the policies of the Bush administration—overseeing a
historic transfer of wealth to the rich, escalating military violence abroad,
and deepening the attacks on democratic rights within the United States."

THE FORBES 400 ARE LOOTING AMERICA FOR EVERY
DROP OF BLOOD THEY HAVE NOT ALREADY STOLEN!

The Rise of bankster-owned Barack Obama and the final
looting of the American middle-class.

BARACK OBAMA will
finally leave office having destroyed the Americanmiddle-class, leaving a nation with staggering debts and open
borders invaded and looted by NARCOmex.
He will go off and collect tens of millions in backend bribes from his crony
banksters in the form of “speaking fees”.

This “Hope and
Change” clown who was nothing more than Bush’s third and fourth terms on
steroids will continue to blame the republican party he hoped to destroy with
amnesty for 40 million looting Mexicans.

Almost six
years after the eruption of the global financial crisis, the International
Monetary Fund has effectively ruled out any return to the economic growth rates
that preceded September 2008.

HE
CONNED A NATION LIKE A CHICAGO HUCKSTER AND CALLED IT “HOPE and CHANGE” ONLY TO
BECOME BUSH’S THIRD AND FORTH TERMS ON STEROIDS!

A new ABC News poll has nothing
but heartache for Democrats and President Obama. By a wide margin of 52-42%,
voters see President Obama as a failed president. Americans also see Obama as
more of a divider than uniter. Only 38% believe President Obama is uniting the
country. A majority of 55% believe he's dividing the country.

The Employment
Situation of Immigrants and Natives in the Second Quarter of 2013

“The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a
massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is
just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer
Finances released Thursday, which documentsa sharp decline in working class
living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich
and the super-rich.”

ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN WORKER RAGES ON UNDER
THE GREAT HISPANDERER OBAMA!

Labor Day 2014

Temp labor at record levels in US

By Andre Damon
2 September 2014

The Obama administration marked Labor Day 2014 with demagogic speeches by
President Obama in Milwaukee and Vice President Joseph Biden in
Detroit—speeches that were notable mainly for the brazenness of their
dishonesty and cynicism.

Obama and Biden postured as partisans of what they referred to as the
“middle class,” even as a number of reports emerged documenting the devastating
decline in conditions for the working class under the current administration.

“The
stock market is booming, the Forbes
400 are richer than ever, yet the conditions for youth and workers are
disastrous. War continues without end, and Obama has gone far beyond Bush in
rendering the Bill of Rights a dead letter.”

The lies, spin and then more lies… THAT IS OBAMA’S STAGED “HOPE and CHANGE”
performance after performance. He’s simply a fraudster… George Bush’s THIRD and
FOURTH TERMS!

“They
knew Obama was an unqualified crook; yet they promoted him. They knew Obama was
a train wreck waiting to happen; yet they made him president, to the great
injury of America and the world. They understood he was only a figurehead, an egomaniac,
and a liar; yet they made him king, doing great harm to our republic (perhaps
irreparable.)” ALLAN ERICKSON

The state of American society as 2015 begins

6 January 2015

As the New Year begins, the social crisis gripping tens of millions of working people in the United States is worsening. Hunger, poverty and long-term joblessness remain at the highest levels in decades, while vital social services continue to be slashed.

One would never know this from reading the press, watching the evening news, or listening to the statements of politicians. The official discourse is dominated by the supposed revival of the American economy, characterized by record corporate profits and stock prices. The fact that the great majority of the population finds it increasingly difficult to make ends meet finds no reflection in the media or official politics.

The incoming Republican-dominated Congress, working with the Obama administration, will focus on cutting corporate taxes and business regulations, planning new wars, and expanding the repressive apparatus of the state. No representative of the political establishment, including the supposedly outspoken liberal Elizabeth Warren and the “independent socialist” Bernie Sanders, is proposing any significant measures to address the deepening social crisis.

The constant of domestic policy—enthusiastically pursued by both big-business parties—is an unrelenting assault on the working class.

Critical social programs are being cut further. Last week, funding for a two-year temporary increase in fees paid to doctors who treat Medicaid patients expired, leading to a reduction in payments of up to 43 percent. The fee cut will lead doctors to stop accepting Medicaid patients under conditions where millions more low-income people are being added to the Medicaid rolls as part of Obamacare.
This week, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that another one million people are scheduled to lose food stamp benefits next year as a result of the imposition of a three-month limit on food stamps for childless adults. Federal food stamp funds were cut by billions of dollars on two separate occasions over the past three years.

These regressive and antisocial policies are being reproduced at the state and local level. The city of Detroit, which just exited from the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history after slashing municipal workers’ pensions and health benefits, is notifying the owners of 35,000 occupied homes that they will be foreclosed upon unless they pay back taxes. The threatened foreclosures could affect nearly 100,000 people, or one in seven of the city’s residents.

The announcement comes as the city continues the systematic shutoff of water service to tens of thousands of residents.

The Detroit bankruptcy has served as a model for plundering workers’ benefits and privatizing public facilities for other cities across the US. The mass foreclosure and water shutoff programs will similarly serve as a precedent for purging potentially valuable urban real estate of working-class and poor residents.

These policies will exacerbate the social crisis facing the working class, which has been devastated not only by the 2008 crash, but also by a “recovery” characterized by falling wages and worsening working and living conditions.

Falling wages have contributed to a rise in poverty, which increased from 12.6 percent of the population in 2007 to 14.5 percent in 2013. According to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), 47 percent of Americans have incomes below 200 percent of the official poverty level, making half of the country either poor or near poor.

According to one study using the SPM as a baseline, “Nearly two-thirds of New York City residents struggled to make ends meet at some point during 2012.”

Nearly one in four US children lives in poverty, the highest level in 20 years. One in five children does not get enough to eat, and the overall rate of food insecurity has grown from 11 percent in 2007 to 16 percent in 2013.

While the official unemployment rate has declined, the share of working-age men who are employed hit its lowest level on record in November 2014. This figure has fallen from 86.7 percent in 1948 to 69 percent today. The share of employees working at temp agencies has climbed during the economic “recovery.” More than 12 million people, or ten percent of the labor force, worked for a temporary employment agency at some point in 2013.

The share of the national income going to the richest 1 percent, and, above all, the top 0.1 and 0.01 percentiles, grows by leaps and bounds. Democracy can be nothing but a hoax in a society characterized by such levels of inequality.

The American political system is not a democracy; it is a plutocracy—a government of, by and for the rich. The financial aristocracy of bankers and financial parasites runs the country by means of the CIA, the military and a thoroughly bribed retinue of politicians from the White House and Congress down to City Hall.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that “three of the country’s wealthiest political contributors each saw their net worth grow in 2014 by more than $3.7 billion, the entire cost of the midterm elections.” This means that it is within the capacity of one person to buy not just a few congressmen or senators, but an entire election. Nothing that in any way challenges the interests of the oligarchy can be broached, much less implemented, within this framework. The “partisan gridlock” that prevails in Congress is largely a form of political theater for the purpose of deceiving the public and obscuring the overriding bipartisan consensus for austerity at home and war abroad.

The growing divergence between the needs and aspirations of the great majority of the population and an increasingly sclerotic political system, expressed in the record low turnout in last year’s election, must ultimately produce revolutionary consequences. There are already signs, such as the wave of protests against police killings, of mass social struggles to come.

They can succeed only if they take the form of an independent political struggle of the working class against both parties of big business and the capitalist system they defend.

Andre Damon

THE “HOPE and CHANGE” CLOWN BARACK OBAMA LEAD THE NATION INTO
MASSIVE BAILOUTS FOR CRONY BANKSTERS, MILLIONS OF JOBS FOR ILLEGALS, BILLIONS
OF DOLLARS IN WELFARE
TO ILLEGALS AND A NATIONAL DEBT GREATER THAN ALL THE PRESIDENTS PUT TOGETHER.THERE WAS NO CHANGE FROM BUSH. OBAMA SIMPLY
IS BUSH’S THIRD AND FOURTH TERMS ON STEROIDS.

“Under President Obama the rich have gotten
richer, income inequality has gotten worse and there are more people in poverty
in American than ever before,” Mr. Romney said, according to The New York
Times.

Romney laid out three pillars for a
potential new campaign, according to the Associated Press,
which would focus on national security, providing more opportunity to the
middle class, and “breaking the scourge of poverty.”

"It's a tragedy, a human tragedy, that
the middle class in this country by and large doesn't believe that the future
will be better than the past."